I'm a lifelong baseball fan and I've been a Memphian nearly all of my adult life.

But until recently, I'm sorry to say, I didn't know about the Martin brothers. Do you?

Before the Dunavants and the Fogelmans, the Martins were the first family of Memphis sports.

The four brothers — a physician, a dentist, a pharmacist and a businessman — were co-owners of the Negro League's Memphis Red Sox and their home ballpark, Martin Stadium.

They not only gave Memphis a championship team in 1938; they brought future Hall-of-Famers such as Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron to town to play ball.

They also were members of Collins Chapel CME Church, the city's oldest and most resilient African-American congregation, which is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year.

'The Martin brothers were quite prominent,' said Miriam Decosta-Willis, author of 'Notable Black Memphians.' 'But they've largely been forgotten, like so much of our history.'

Either forgotten or not remembered in the first place.

I knew about Collins Chapel. I've been writing about religion in Memphis for more than 20 years.

But until recently, I'm sorry to say, I didn't know Collins Chapel was one of four black churches that were burned during the 1866 Memphis Massacre.

Until a few months ago, I knew almost nothing about the massacre itself, even though it's one of the most tragic and significant chapters in local and national history.

'That's why they call it his-story,' Howard Robertson, a member of Collins Chapel, a friend of the late Dr. B.B. Martin (the dentist), and president and CEO of TRUST Marketing. 'The dominant culture has always written the history books.'

There's the Memphis history we all know.

Civil War heroes and civil rights icons. Victims and martyrs of epidemics and floods. Piggly Wiggly and Holiday Inn. Beale and Sun and Stax. Chicks and Tigers and Grizzlies.

Then there's the Memphis many of us ignore or never knew about in the first place.

The post-Civil War massacre that devastated the black community, leaving nearly 50 dead and dozens wounded, leveling more than 90 black properties including schools and churches.

The 21 Jim Crow-era lynchings in Shelby County, most in the state and fifth most of any county in the South.

The black citizens who were harassed, physically and financially, by Boss Crump and his cronies.

That included Dr. J.R. Martin, whom Crump ran out of town for, among other acts of defiance, speaking out publicly against him.

Like Ida B. Wells, who was run out of town for her anti-lynching campaign in the 1890s, Martin took his gifts to Chicago, where he became president of the Negro American League.

That's the other unfortunate thing about the lost history of Memphis. When we don't know about the shameful episodes, we also don't know how people struggled through and overcame them.

We need to know how people like Martin, Wells, Robert Church Sr. (shot during the massacre) and Robert Church Jr. (run out of town by Crump) confronted and prevailed over the bigotry and hatred of the times.

How men like the Martin brothers not only went to college and medical school in the Jim Crow South, but became respected professionals and successful business owners in a city run like a plantation.

How members of Collins Chapel, Lincoln Chapel (which became LeMoyne College), First Baptist Beale and Avery Chapel AME — all burned during the massacre — rebuilt their churches and lives.

Dr. W.S. Martin, for example, became superintendent of Collins Chapel Hospital, the city's first full-functioning hospital for black residents, widely known for training black doctors and nurses.

'This is a period of African-American community building, literally from the ashes,' said Dr. Beverly Bond, a history professor at the University of Memphis. 'It's quite remarkable, the more you learn about it.'

Fortunately, we're all learning more about it. Earlier this month, the local NAACP and the National Park Service dedicated a memorial marker to victims of the Memphis Massacre.

Friday and Saturday, the University of Memphis will host a national symposium on the massacre and its profound impact on the country.

Sunday afternoon, local clergy and others will conduct an interfaith prayer service at the presumed site of the notorious 1917 lynching of Ell Persons.

Collins Chapel, the oldest survivor of the massacre, will be celebrating its 175th with various events throughout the year.

Someday, the Martin brothers will be as well known in all of Memphis as they are at Collins Chapel.

Memphis Massacre Symposium

What: “Memories of a Massacre: Memphis in 1866, a Symposium Exploring Slavery, Emancipation, and Reconstruction.”

When: 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: University of Memphis, University Center Theater

Cost: Free and open to the public

Keynote address, 6 p.m. Friday: Robert K. Sutton, Chief Historian of the National Park Service, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of American History: Remembering Reconstruction”